excluding, and
back-stabbing
are the central activities / tactics of a new thing psychologists identified in 1995:
Relational Aggression.
You can read about it on the Information Superhighway (internet).
(They were calling it that, in the early 1990s - !! Seems like no one remembers that except me -- they always think I'm off-the-wall...)
It's a relief, sort of, to learn of this, (relational aggression) because -- instead of an uncertain feeling of an amorphous, floating-around, mysterious unpleasantness that you can't understand and wonder if you said / did Something Wrong, you can say, "Hey, I know what that is. I read about it."
Somehow having the information organized and explained makes you less likely to feel hurt by it.
It's attributed to teen-age girls more than anyone else, but some people of various ages and both genders do it.
Psychologists were probably motivated to study it and try to come up with solutions because --
1. trouble in schools, when students' behavior becomes too disruptive and damaging, and
2. "Relational Aggression" would not be "new" (as I put it, above) but it would have increased bad results because Now it can escalate / spiral super-fast, through all the Technology.
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After I first read about this phenomenon / behavior pattern, memories went flip, flip, flip, through my head like turning pages in a photo album -- that one! that one! that one!
OMG -- that's what that was, it was Relational Aggression!
There's a more complex level of it, which involves more manipulation through relationships, which is for the Psychologists, not the English Majors to contemplate -- the kind I notice is the "excluding" -- the obvious, circumstantial kind.
A beautiful person who used to work with me told me once that she did not at all care for one man who works here. I asked her Why -- (some people never like any authority figures, but she did not seem like that type) -- she answered (English, her second language, so she had her own style of it) -- "He try to make you feel, these (gesturing with her hands) people are part of my ... my circle, and you are not."
Epiphany! That's what she had perceived -- Relational Aggression.
I've observed several times (and always wondered -- WHY? Why the rudeness?) -- where, OK, two people are in a room. Another person -- person X, walks in, and Person X speaks animatedly with one of the original people in the room and pointedly ignores the other one.
An office manager I observed years ago, would do that same thing in such a rapid-fire way, it was disconcerting and a little scary. It was just that she had practiced a lot and become really good at it. She would turn to one person by her desk and be REALLY-SUPER-NICE, overly-done, laughing almost too loudly, whatever ... very exaggerated behavior. Then she would turn, mid-sentence sometimes, to another person nearby and say, with a hostile expression and a deadly, low, angry voice: "Yes?" or "What do you want?" And then an uncooperative response, then snap back to the first person and do the "Oh my gosh that's so funny, & so great to see you! you always have to come in and talk to me, I know!"
Like -- Mood Ping-Pong or something.
I could never forget listening to one woman tell another (these were not teen-agers, but people in their 50s) that she and her husband had been to a dinner party at B & R's house, Saturday night. You had the impression that the dinner-party one was trying to make the other one feel bad, or something, because she had not been invited to this.
(Meanwhile I'm having one of those moments -- like, hmm, these papers on my desk seem to need re-shuffling, and maybe even to be put into different file folders -- ermh -- anything but watch this silliness. Pretend to ignore...)
The recipient of the information just said something pleasant, like "Oh that sounds like a fun evening" or something & moved forward with a question she had about something else -- appearing unaffected by the Idea of Not Having Been Invited to this Dinner Party.
And the Dinner Party one --
SAID IT AGAIN !
Louder, and with more emphasis.
"P and I went to B & R's Saturday night for a dinner party!"
(LOL) Smooth.
Ve-e-e-e-ry subtle.
I thought at the time, my goodness if you don't have ANY emotional maturity by the time you're in your 50s I don't know when you are going to get it.
But what I needed to remember is, that person probably was not striving for emotional maturity.
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"Relational aggression" also reminded me of a time in fifth grade when a whole bunch of girls in my grade level came in from recess really really mad at each other. There were 6 or 7 or 8 of them on Each Side of the conflict, and it was a Whole Big Thing of not speaking to each other. I never knew what it was about. (My father would say, "Do not be drawn into other people's soap operas." [Today we would say, "Don't get sucked into people's drama."])
The evening after the Recess Eruption, I was in a mall store for a little bit, while my mom shopped; I was to meet her in half hour, or something, and I saw Marty, a fifth-grader from a different class. She was involved in that "insurgency" and I remember feeling surprised by that. Because she seemed like a "together" kind of person.
When I saw her in the store, she was going down an aisle, away from me, but in a moment she turned back & hurried over toward me, smiling. She laughed when she reached me: "I wasn't going to talk to you, but then I remembered, you're not one of the ones I'm not talking to!"
We both laughed. It felt grown-up, to be Out at The Store, standing together and talking, without our mothers.
-30-
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